An instinctive character belongs also to the highest functions of human life, as in art and virtue. Wisdom proper, says Schopenhauer, is something intuitive, and not something pertaining to the intellect. It does not consist in principles and thoughts, which are carried about ready in the mind, as the result of research, but it is the whole manner in which the world presents itself intuitively to the mind. In real life the scholar is far surpassed by the man of the world, for the strength of the latter consists in perfect intuitive knowledge. The {80} true view of life proceeds from the way in which the world is known and understood, not from abstract knowledge. The heart of all knowledge is intuition. Upon this depends the infinite superiority of genius to learning and scholarship. They stand to each other as the text of a classic to its commentary. It was this emphasis, which Schopenhauer laid on the instinctive and impulsive side in man, rather than on the conscious and deliberate, which led him to the view that man is a creature controlled and dominated by his instincts, and therefore a mere puppet in the hands of nature. This aspect of Schopenhauer's system acquires a special importance, when compared with much of the most modern philosophy. There are interesting points of contact with the views of M. Bergson, who maintains that in the intuition of life we see reality as it is. The intellect is merely a tool in the service of the will. Since philosophy must express the real nature of life, we are driven to seek reality through that which is felt. Since the time of Socrates, Schopenhauer maintained, philosophy has made a systematic misuse of general conceptions. We have an immediate experience of the will, and therefore we may be said to have an immediate knowledge of the nature of reality. One of the most valuable contributions which Schopenhauer made to the history of thought, was his insistence on the view that philosophy must be brought back to the recognition of the richness of an immediate and direct knowledge of reality. It must learn that the meaning of things is to be realised more by living than by thinking. The philosopher, therefore, must be before all things "a real man," a guide to fine living. Schopenhauer brought philosophy into relation with life, he drew it down from the icy heights, where {81} abstract conceptions alone can flourish, to the sunny plains below, where art, with "a spark of the divine fire," warms and lightens the ways of man. The intuitive insight of the genius, which divines the truth through art, is a far higher form of knowledge than that of the abstract thinker. It is suggestive to compare with this the view of Pater, that "philosophy serves culture, not by the fancied gift of absolute or transcendental knowledge, but by suggesting questions which help one to detect the passion, and strangeness, and dramatic contrasts of life."